Voters To Decide Beaches` Future

Palm Beach County voters will go to the polls Tuesday to make a $75 million decision that likely could influence the places many county residents, and tourists, spend their free time in coming years.

If they vote yes, the result will be anything from the salvation of county beaches, to a financial boondoggle that will haunt county residents for years, based on campaign rhetoric churned out on both sides of the issue during recent weeks.

County officials who proposed and adamantly supported the bond sale say this will be the last opportunity residents have to purchase the few remaining parcels of undeveloped oceanfront land in the county.

With that money, they have proposed buying as much as half of the county`s 4.2 miles of undeveloped beachfront land and several parcels of land along the shores of Lake Okeechobee.

But a well-organized opposition to the bond sale has argued the beaches are already public and the millions in increased taxes that will result will do little more than purchase new parking lots.

``I think most of the people I`ve talked to in the county are concerned about the blank check,`` said David Robinson, chairman of the PALMS Committee (People`s Action to Lower Monetary Spending), a group formed to oppose the bond issue.

``These beaches are empty and they are open from here to the Canadian border,`` he said.